Category Archives: Finnegan’s Friends

Add a kitchen table, stacks of art books and magazines, two baskets of laundry, another row of teacup shelves, a different iron, and a large bernese mt dog at my feet…

and you would be welcome to come join us as we head into the final stages of preparing to leave for the Granary Gallery show !

I left the ironing ’til last. Despite my predilection for sweats and smocks,I do try to make an effort to look respectable when I leave the studio and venture out into the real world.

And, while this heat dome is determined to hover over the east coast, I am determined to let linen keep what little air movement there may be…flowing.I’m halfway through the ironing. For the last two hours, Finnegan has been laying in front of the air vent.

I needed a break, so I’m writing to say hey, stay frosty out there my friends, and island breezes…here we come !

The call came in at 3:30am from the hard working vet that Finn was out of surgery and doing well. I had caved in at midnight so it was early this morning that I got the message. Now my flu ravaged body may still be weary but my spirits are high. By this time next week all members of my little family should be off of antibiotics and we can say good riddance to displaysed elbows and rattling pneumonic lungs and maybe even to … snow ???

I’ve got to pass along our thanks to all of you who have been checking in and offering help and that all important compassionate ear of support… you will never know how those words and gestures of kindness reach in and lift us up.

One person who has done some heavy lifting in that department is our friend Saren. She has talked me down off of many a ledge especially with dear Finnegan’s trials. I was checking in with her early this morning and felt like a corner has been turned. The sun is shining, there is a definite warming in the air, and when I took the time to look I found the first signs of spring in the studio yard…

Can I get a witness ???

Through the darkest days of this long hard winter I’ve been taking myself to one of the happiest and most anticipated events of my year…the Sheep and Wool Festival !

The warm sunny first weekend in May when the Howard County Fairgrounds fill up with color and fiber and everything sheep. The crowd is full of my kind of people…old back to nature hippies who dress in sensible clothes and parade their knitted and woven creations and scour through the straw strewn farm shed stall to replenish their supplies of yarn and fleece and needles and sheep dip, etc.

There are many happy memories there for us and I’m so excitedly looking forward to making that trip this year…we may go both days !

My spinning wheel waits behind the snow shovel…

And I’ve got one great big panel up on the easel that needs to be finished before then…

But by golly I can feel it getting closer…I am dreaming now of coming home with a nice bag of fleece in the truck and oiling up the old wheel and sitting on the warm sunny porch with Finnegan stealing bits of wool and running down the walkway with it flying up over her shoulders in triumph…

Well it was a wild week up on the little island of Martha’s Vineyard… the show was a huge success, there were many new adventures, new vistas to investigate, a little bit of poison ivy, lots of early morning walks on the beach, many evenings of friendship and fine feasts, way too many kudos and not nearly enough sushi…and now that we’re home again I am rejuvinated by the enthusiastic response to the new paintings and ready to dig deeper and take the work to a whole new level.

Here is a gallery with some of the highlights of the trip…

check out our little apprentice as she visits the island for the first time…from the big boat to the bigger ocean she was a trooper… she left the last of her puppy teeth there and is now settling in to her cushy day job here in the studio…

another new adventure was being interviewed for Plum TV which has stations in lots of fancy vacation spots…they followed me around for a day with cameras and two delightful cinematographers…and our friend Barb followed them…very much looking the Annie Lebowitz part…

we had our usual techno breakdown on the night of the opening so there are only a couple photos… but I went in the next day and got some shots of the gallery to give you a feel for the place …just imagine a few hundred people milling about with mixed beverages and kind things to say and you’ve got the rest of the picture…

and then there are a few shots of good times with good friends and some views of the pond house where we whiled away the week that was… and of our visit with Ted to Menemsha and a stop over to Jane Slater’s, my teacup muse, and a chance for Ted and Herbert to catch up on some laughs…then, finally, a tight squeeze on the new ferry back over to America…

Finnegan got to meet some of her pack members for the first time and she had a blast. Saren brought Margie, the lab who survived her breeding years to be rescued by the most conscientious dog owner I know and now she is living the life of Riley getting to see the best of the rest of the world…and Susan brought her loyal pal Tag who is, as we all are, missing his big sister Emma but he is now carrying the cloak of her gentle confident manner and was the perfect gentlemen.

Both were wondeful with the squirrelly little puppy and Finnegan was eager to greet everyone and kept right up with the big dogs.

All that excitement…AND her first puppy class…made for a very tired pup at the end of the day.

Today it’s all business and, with our morning rituals finished…like waiting to play with Jed at the fence…

and filling the bird feeders…

and taking up her post as sentry at the studio door…

My apprentice is giving me the freckly eyeball…so it’s time for some serious painting…